Re: Hellboy 3

Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman sat down with Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull last night, a break from the San Francisco-based weekend press tour for Pacific Rim.

Del Toro told me this morning, during our one-on-one chat, that Perlman brought up the prospect of Hellboy 3. "I hate giving pieces about it, but last night, we were at dinner and Ron said, 'I would be very happy to do Hellboy again, when are we doing Hellboy 3?' Thomas [Tull] said, 'I would love to see Hellboy 3.' He didn't say he would love to do it he just said he'd like to see it, but today, I'll ask him."

Later this morning, we spoke with Perlman agreed Legendary would be a great home for the final chapter in the Hellboy legacy.

"Not just anybody can make this movie," Perlman told us. "I loved working for Legendary and I know for Guillermo working on Pacific Rim was one of his greatest experiences. The reason I loved working for them is because Guillermo was so happy. I came in six months into the shoot and he seemed as fresh as a daisy, simply because he was working for someone who appreciated and supported his outlandish visions of what he wanted to put on the screen. My immediate, silent wish was, wouldn't it be great if these guys came in and helped resolve the Hellboy series."

Re: Hellboy 3

I think there's a possibility that Legendary might partner up with Universal. IIRC, Legendary wants to make At The Mountains of Madness. I think it came up in an interview with Del Toro at one point. If they also want to do Hellboy 3, then it would make sense that they'd align themselves there. Who knows, maybe even Universal's new Frankenstein, which Guillermo Del Toro is still slated to do at some point, has also been talked about for all we know (despite two other unrelated Frankenstein films releasing, presumably, next year).

The reason Mountains was canceled was because they were terrified of the budget on an R-rated period piece with no women (thus no love interest) and a bleak ending with tons of effects. If Legendary partners with Universal, that film will almost definitely get made, Hellboy 3 might get made, and perhaps GDT's Frankenstein will get made at some point too.

I think a big deciding factor will be the box office performance of Pacific Rim. Crimson Peak may also factor slightly, but I wouldn't bet on it, seeing as it's presumably got a much smaller budget and isn't quite on the same level as PacRim.

Re: Hellboy 3

I'm still hesitant which movie I want more. I love Hellboy but also H.P. Lovecraft is my all time favorite horror author. I guess I prefer to see At the Mountains of Madness first.
Also I can't wait to see The Strain TV series produced by GDT. Really enjoyed his book.

Re: Hellboy 3

Looks like indeed ATMOM has a bigger chance to happen before Hellboy 3:

IO9 were doing press roundtables with Tull just now, they asked him if there was really a possibility of Legendary doing Hellboy 3, and whether he'd had that conversation with del Toro. To which Tull responded:

Seeing how we don't own the rights to Hellboy, there may be lawyers that would get upset about that. But you know, in Guillermo's world, maybe he can make that go away. I don't know. [Laughs]

But separately, Tull said that he would possibly consider producing del Toro's stalled adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness, "if something became available.

Re: Hellboy 3

“It’s very unlikely it’ll happen because you need things to converge so strongly. [Producer] Larry Gordon, Universal, the rights, Ron [Perlman’s] and mine’s availability, [comic creator] Mike [Mingola’s] blessing; we have pieces of that, but we don’t have all of that. You need so many things to confluence and then you need about $150 million.”

When asked if he would do a Hellboy 3 in the form of comics or a graphic novel in a way how Dredd 2 is, del Toro had this to say:

“I talked to Mike about making it a comic and Mike said very clearly, ‘Hellboy the movies is yours, Hellboy the comics is mine; I don’t wanna confuse them.’ He has been very clear about not bringing any mythology we did in the movies into the comics, like Kroenen being a mechanical clockwork zombie Nazi, or The Samaritan, which is not called ‘The Samaritan’ in the comics, or Big Baby, or Abe Sapien being like the character he is in the movies, which is different. In the comics he’s a hard-ass, Abe Sapien is really a tough guy, and in the movie he’s like this sensitive, mind reading fish man. So [Mike] is very careful, no love story between Liz and Hellboy, so on and so forth."

del Toro finally said that he does have a story ready and prepared for Hellboy 3 and that it would be a completely different direction than the first 2 installments:

“The way Hellboy 1 and Hellboy 2 are very different from each other, Hellboy 3 is different enough from the other two that it wouldn’t feel like the same universe in scale. He does become the beast of the apocalypse. But seeing the apocalypse is getting more and more—the bar is raised higher and higher every year; mass destruction is becoming the sport of the summer.”

It is important to note that Mike Mingola has said he would love to do a Hellboy 3, Ron Perlman has said he wants to do a Hellboy 3 and currently the film rights to Hellboy are with Universal but Legendary Studio's President has said he is interested in a third Hellboy and one of the places Legendary Studios is looking to move into is Universal. It's possible but it's all really a matter of how great Pacific Rim is. At the end of the day, I still do have hope that this movie will be made and I do think it will because everybody wants to do it, it's all really a matter of getting everybody in the same room and agreeing to make it. What are your thoughts on this? I need a drink. Where you at cipher?

Speaking of Hellboy, last night Guillermo Del Toro told a journalist that he was going to talk to you about possibly doing Hellboy 3 with Legendary. Has that conversation taken place?
Thomas Tull: Well, seeing how we don’t own the rights to Hellboy, there may be lawyers that would get upset about that, but in Guillermo’s world, maybe he can make that go away. I don’t know.

Have you had conversations?
Thomas Tull: Look, we’re making his next movie, “Crimson Peak,” which we start in January, and if it became available, it’s certainly something we would consider.

Richard Jenkins is in talks to star in Crimson Peak director Guillermo Del Toro‘s otherworldly Cold War love story, THE SHAPE OF WATER. Jenkins would be joining Sally Hawkins in the previously untitled project, which is being written by Del Toro for Fox Searchlight. Octavia Spencer and Michael Stuhlbarg are also in negotiations to star.

While details have long been kept under wraps, we’re hearing that the fairytale, set in 1963, centers around Elisa (Hawkins), a mute janitor working at a lab where an amphibious man is being held captive. When Elisa falls in love with the creature, she devises a plan to help him escape with the assistance of her neighbor (Jenkins). The world outside of the lab, however, may prove to be more dangerous for the amphibious man than Elisa could have anticipated.

The film is being produced by Del Toro and Callum Greene. Liz Sayre is the production executive for Fox Searchlight, while David Greenbaum will oversee for the studio.

The story has elements that fans of Del Toro should recognize, namely the incorporation of fantastical elements into a specific time and place in the real world. Pan’s Labriynth, for example, saw an imaginative young girl escaping into the world of a fairytale amid the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. The ‘amphibious man’ character, meanwhile, echoes Abe Sapien, the amphibious sidekick portrayed by Doug Jones and David Hyde Pierce in Del Toro’s Hellboy.

Jenkins, who was previously nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars for his performance in The Visitor, is best known for his roles in HBO’s Six Feet Under and Olive Kitteridge, comedies like Step Brothers and Burn After Reading, and genre films like Cabin the Woods and Jack Reacher. He’ll next be seen in Rob Reiner’s LBJ.

Re: Hellboy 3

Hellboy, the demonic comic book hero turned Guillermo del Toro film franchise, is poised to return to the big screen, this time without the filmmaker at the helm.

Millennium is in negotiations with producers Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin for a new installment that would reboot and relaunch the property. Mike Richardson of Dark Horse Entertainment is also producing.

Neil Marshall, the horror director who broke out with The Descent and won raves for his work on Game of Thrones, is attached to direct the project, which has a working title of Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen and has a script by Andrew Cosby, Christopher Golden and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola.

Del Toro is not involved, nor is Ron Perlman, the actor who inhabited the red-skinned, cigar-chomping devil in the two previous installments.

Rather, David Harbour, the Stranger Things star, is in talks to play Hellboy.

If a deal is made, Millennium would become the third company to make a Hellboy movie in as many releases.

Hellboy was created in 1993 by Mignola and became an indie comic hit as it told of a demon, raised by a professor, working to fight supernatural evildoers for an organization called Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

Del Toro co-wrote and directed the first adaptation, which was made by Revolution Studios and released by Sony in 2004. The movie made $60 million domestically (another $40 million internationally, asterisked by the fact that this was the era before international box-office dominated performance) on a budget of $66 million.

The second movie was made by Universal with the same team — del Toro and Perlman — but its box-office mojo was cut short when The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan and featuring Heath Ledger as the Joker, opened six days later.

But both movies engendered strong cult followings and there were rumblings of a third installment. Last year, del Toro, Dark Horse Entertainment, Levin and Gordon, the latter of whom controls the rights, explored their options. However, the budget was a stumbling block, with del Toro wanting a bigger canvas for his vision. In the end, the producers decided a reboot and relaunch was the more feasible route.

Marshall is now developing a new script with Aron Coleite, who worked on NBC's Heroes and is also working on the new Star Trek: Discovery series. He will also act as a producer with his partner Marc Helwig.